Chris Martin experienced a stroke because of a carotid artery dissection as a result of repeated traumas to his neck while participating in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu also known as BJJ.
Socials:
Recent blog article with signs to watch for
Bizjitsu
Link to the referenced article
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1544316718816133
Highlights:
02:08 Introduction
03:58 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Stroke
09:31 Lack of Awareness lead to ischemic stroke
16:49 BJJ Pros and Cons
21:56 Signs of Carotid Artery Dissection
26:38 Waking Up In The Hospital
31:44 Lack of Precautionary Measures
38:25 Possible Misdiagnosis
44:56 Duplex Ultrasound
55:34 Delayed Strokes
1:08:26 Bonds Forged In BJJ
Transcription:
Chris Martin 0:00
Then the last thing I’m never going to forget, the last thing they said. They said to me, it’s like, can you move any part of your right body? Can you move that leg at all? In my mind, I took everything and I was like.
Chris Martin 0:17
And my leg just twitched. And then I just remember the doctor say, put him out, put him out. Boom, I was out. Next thing you know, I wake up in the hospital, like literally, like, wake up in the hospital bed and my family’s all around me. And I’m looking around and I’m like, oh shit, I survived. And then I started down like well, okay, I got the disability insurance policy.
Intro 0:49
This is the recovery after stroke podcast, with Bill Gasiamis helping you navigate recovery after stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 1:03
Hello, and welcome to recovery after stroke a podcast full of answers, advice and practical tools for stroke survivors to help you take back your life after a stroke and build a stronger future.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14
I’m your host three times stroke survivor Bill Gasiamis. After my own life was turned upside down and I went from being an active father to being stuck in hospital. I knew if I wanted to get back to the life I loved before my recovery was up to me.
Bill Gasiamis 1:27
After years of researching and discovering a learn how to heal my brain and rebuild a healthier and happier life than I ever dreamed possible. And now I’ve made it my mission to empower other stroke survivors like you to recover faster, achieve your goals and take back the freedom you deserve.
Bill Gasiamis 1:43
If you enjoy this episode and want more resources, accessible training and hands on support, check out my recovery after stroke coaching membership created especially for stroke survivors and caregivers.
Bill Gasiamis 1:56
This is your clear pathway to transform your symptoms, reduce your anxiety, and navigate your journey to recovery with confidence, head to recoveryafterstroke.com To find out more after this podcast.
Introduction
Bill Gasiamis 2:08
But for now let’s dive right into today’s show. This is episode 175. And my guest today is Chris Martin, who is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu enthusiast and coach who experienced an ischemic stroke due to repeated traumas to the carotid artery sustained in the sport while he was being choked and strangled by his opponents.
Bill Gasiamis 2:37
Now Chris is on a mission to raise awareness in the BJJ community about the risks of the sport. But more importantly is interested in raising awareness about how to spot the signs of stroke, and how to take action fast if you suspect someone at a Brazilian Jujitsu event, or BJJ event may be showing the signs of stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 3:03
Since this is a stroke prevention interview, please share it far and wide. If you have been meaning to share an episode of the podcast and haven’t got around to it yet. This is the one to share whether you are listening on a podcast app or watching on YouTube. There has never been a better episode to share.
Bill Gasiamis 3:23
It would mean so much to me, and it might just help save a life. Thank you, Chris Martin, welcome to the podcast.
Chris Martin 3:31
Thank you. How are you?
Bill Gasiamis 3:32
Man I’m doing well. I really appreciate you reaching out because this topic that we’re going to talk about today is something that’s really close to my heart and something that I’m worried about since my own stroke and since learning about dissections in arteries, but before we get into that part of it, tell me a little bit about what happened to you?
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Stroke
Chris Martin 3:58
I think the best way to summarize it is a lack of awareness in what I do and first, my hobby is what we’re going to talk about today Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and I’m very passionate about it.
Chris Martin 4:18
I found it in 2008 at a time in my life where I needed it, and it did change my life in many ways and I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole. However for the general listener, I want them to understand what Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is.
Chris Martin 4:41
Is a martial art that is used the best way I can describe it is to use the least energy and exertion to manage your output and put the end goal in a combative situation using Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is to get to the back and finish with a strangle.
Chris Martin 5:14
In the sport, the misconception is you hear the word chokeholds. But in the medical field chokes and strangles are two different things. What we do is we try to strangle our friends as quick as we can.
Chris Martin 5:33
And they tap out when they feel like there’s no way that they can get out of the strangle. And if they feel like they’re going to maybe pass out, go to sleep. And they usually, my friends are pretty crazy.
Chris Martin 5:53
And they will wait as long as they can until they almost go to sleep, or they might go to sleep many of them, we do this to each other about six to seven days a week, sometimes twice a day.
Bill Gasiamis 6:09
And when you say strangling, what you’re actually doing is you’re placing pressure, either with your arms or with your legs onto the neck, and that impacts the vertebral or the carotid arteries and decreases the blood flow to the brain. So they have no choice but to go limp.
Chris Martin 6:35
Yep, and they go and, the more we do this as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners who are very passionate about this, we find even sneakier and sneakier and more efficient ways to apply pressure to the vertebrals and the carotids.
Chris Martin 6:56
Sometimes we wear these fancy outfits that looks like pajamas, they’re called Gis, and they have long straps that we can pull out. It will look like a karate kimono. However, we use it to wrap around each other’s necks that has collars we use to hold the collars, pull, strangle, apply pressure at the same time as we’re putting knees in the back of the vertebrals.
Chris Martin 7:24
We are ripping bow and arrow chokes, we are pulling materials around the person’s neck, I should have worn Gi I could go get one if I need to. But you get the picture. And it’s a relatively fast growing sport, because of how addictive and how healthy it is from the standpoint of mental health and physical health.
Chris Martin 7:53
So who I am is somebody who fell in love with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in a time of my life where I needed something from a mental standpoint, and a physical standpoint, I was not in a good place in my life at 28 years old.
Chris Martin 8:09
And I’m 43 now and I have not stopped doing what I love. However, in 2017 it was during a periodic two months of pretty heavy strangling with my friends working on specific chokes to the back, making our chokes more efficient.
Chris Martin 8:41
And one day in practice, I was caught in a strangle. And again, like I said, we have the opportunity to either tap or go to sleep. Or in my case, just keep fighting out of it. Try to find a way out because in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the mindset has always been there’s always a way out.
Chris Martin 9:08
And that’s what helps develop your character. Because you learn to overcome adversity through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu through being strangled and putting yourself in very bad positions that are very uncomfortable. And you do it again and again and again. And it makes you more of a humble human being.
Lack of Awareness lead to ischemic – Chris Martin
Chris Martin 9:31
And that’s the beauty of jujitsu. However, that day in August 2017. I did not tap out. And I was very unaware tha the struggles that I had accumulated over the years could potentially cause a little bit of damage, trauma to my carotid arteries.
Chris Martin 10:04
And over time, I had some a little bit of a tear on my left carotid artery. And I did have some signs I learned after I had the stroke because I missed the signs because of the lack of awareness in the sport, and it’s nobody’s fault. It just is what it is.
Chris Martin 10:36
And I didn’t tap out however, my partner let go of me when he felt my body just limp. And I just remember the the room spinning that was on my back. I couldn’t communicate, no words were coming out of my mouth.
Chris Martin 10:57
Long story short, it was a full ischemic stroke, the clot was on my neck was very large, that had been sitting there for some time, I had not given a time to heal. And that day the torque of the north south choke, applied by my teammate Rob shot the clot to my brain, which immediately caused an ischemic stroke.
Chris Martin 11:24
The medical team it’s Frater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, administered the TPA, they were able to get me to the hospital, within an hour, they had the TPA shot to the brain saved my life.
Chris Martin 11:43
And here I am on stroke to recovery podcast, and you’re still recovering, you know, to this day, however, during that time, what happened to me that day didn’t make sense. And while I was in the hospital, it didn’t make sense. And when I was out the month after it didn’t make sense.
Chris Martin 12:11
And it put me on a path of research and understanding. And through that journey, I did receive a phone call right after this happened. Because I was on an article came out about it on Jiu-jitsu times.
Chris Martin 12:34
And then immediately I got a phone call from somebody who was very interested and he was a former military person. And he was very interested because he had been doing parachuting in the military.
Chris Martin 12:50
And he had like double carotid artery dissection, which caused strokes, both sides. And he was like, trying to get back into martial arts, but he just wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
Chris Martin 13:01
And he was telling me how rare this whole thing is. And he said, you need to document what you’re doing. And I said, Okay, so I’m like, I started writing. And then just putting up little blogs.
Chris Martin 13:19
And then people started reaching out to me in the martial art community who also had happened to them. And I started interviewing them to learn more about their cases, I would ask, Can I record it? So I can always reference it? Because I’m not going to remember anything in this interview.
Chris Martin 13:41
And they, most of them all agreed, yes. So during my time of healing and recovery, I was able to talk to other survivors. And through that conversation, I learned about what happened to them and how it happened.
Chris Martin 13:59
Did you have signs? Did you this? And then I started documenting on a spreadsheet. And then let’s put it this way over the past four years, and now here we are, the spreadsheet I stopped counting after over 100.
Chris Martin 14:17
And so it’s not as rare as we think, however people are very uneducated, there’s no protocols. There’s some gyms that are just completely brushing it under the rug. There’s some gyms that have had multiple people in the same gym have strokes, and the instructors still are brushing it under the rug.
Chris Martin 14:40
And so the hard part for that is that each person who has their stroke they have their story in their head. They look at themselves as a number this is me. But the difference that I see in what happened and then they go about their daily lives. And it’s just that and but what happens is, I get the call from every single one of them.
Chris Martin 15:11
And then I form a relationship with them. And I talk to them. And then I even get the bad ones too the ones from the widows, the ones that are still in the wheelchair, the ones that are still in the hospital fighting, you know, and these are people who are on these are jiu-jitsu people.
Chris Martin 15:37
They’re different. And no different than, you know, they’re passionate about what they do. It’s just it takes a physical person, it takes somebody who is, it’s okay to get your ass kicked that type of thing and come over and over and over again, like, these aren’t weak-minded people. These are very, very strong-minded people. They do not like to lose.
Bill Gasiamis 16:08
They’ve never messed with stroke, that’s the issue and stroke will get the better of a lot of people that are very strong-willed. I think the beauty of jiu-jitsu is it does create a great foundation for overcoming serious adversity in life.
Bill Gasiamis 16:24
And the skills can be transferred to stroke recovery, right. And what’s interesting is my son who’s 25, now started BJJ, probably about three or four years ago after it gained popularity because of Mixed Martial Arts, and UFC. And he’s given me the whole, “I did it for my mental health” spiel as well.
BJJ Pros and Cons
Bill Gasiamis 16:49
And it’s really interesting that the lessons that he’s able to obtain about calmness, thinking, not overreacting, and not breathing inappropriately, and focusing on the mind and body connection has really shifted this guy who, in our modern world, was quick to becoming a statistic of anxiety, and maybe even depression or something like that.
Bill Gasiamis 17:21
So the camaraderie that he has there, with the people that he trains with, so I see the major upside to a sport like BJJ. And then as somebody who’s experienced three, hemorrhagic strokes, and I’m into my 10th, year of recovery, and I’ve met hundreds of stroke survivors, and widows, and the bad ones, the ones that are still, you know, struggling to get back to some kind of version of life that resembles normality, which they never do.
Bill Gasiamis 17:55
Most of us have a different version of what normal is. I hate to discourage my son about BJJ, I hate to say to him, listen, don’t go down this path because of this issue. And as kids what they used to do, my son and his brothers days to choke each other, and smash each other and belt each other.
Bill Gasiamis 18:21
And for me, it was like, don’t touch each other’s heads and don’t touch each other’s throats do not do that. Because you can damage arteries, and you can cause strokes, and you can cause long lasting effects. So please don’t do that.
Bill Gasiamis 18:34
Now, the other thing I’m concerned about is, is that he might be involved in an incident where he creates a situation for somebody else that ends with them being hospitalized because of a carotid artery of vertebral artery dissection, and then a stroke right?
Bill Gasiamis 18:52
And it’s like, there is definitely more that needs to be done. I’m glad you reached out, I’m not glad that you had a stroke. And I’m not glad that it’s happening. But the fact that you’ve taken this stance, where most people sweep it under the carpet, I think it’s really fabulous, because it’s a problem around the world.
Bill Gasiamis 19:14
And in Australia, there are many people that my son goes to BJJ with his age and older and younger, but, of course, they’re all his mates, there’s probably about 10 of them that I know. And then there’s other people that are my age in the early 40s and 50s that are going to BJJ or just started.
Bill Gasiamis 19:32
And I would imagine that they are completely unaware of this situation as well. Right? So I could reach out right now to at least 15 people that I know personally, that go to BJJ. And I wonder if they know anybody who’s had a stroke or not.
Bill Gasiamis 19:50
Due to a sports injury, and then I wonder if they know how it’s been dealt with and how that person is now and whether They’ve managed to come back to BJJ. Or they gave up completely. I imagine that most people who have an injury because of a sport like that would go enough. I’m not coming back to that sport.
Chris Martin 20:10
I think most would. But just jumping back into, you know, what I said before is that this is what has changed my life. So, I use this comparison, every time I just see it the most. It’s, if a surfer goes into the ocean, and he goes surfing, and he gets bit by a shark.
Chris Martin 20:34
But that’s everything, that was his passion, that’s his lifestyle, he wakes up in the morning there’s coconut juice, you know, skateboards down with his longboard, or he’s got his, everything, the sun is good, like, everything’s great.
Chris Martin 20:49
And then he gets attacked by a shark. And, but he lives, and it was a scariest moment of his life. And, but he recognizes, you know, he recognizes the signs, you know, that was a, you know, a night after the storm, you know what I mean? And that’s when the sharks are out, or it’s a low tide.
Chris Martin 21:10
You know, now he’s aware of it. And instead of ignoring, and just jumping in and pretending like it would never happen to him, or just not even thinking about it, but it’s something that he loves, will he go back, I would think that the surfer is going to go back in the water, but he’s just going to go back in differently. And that’s kind of how I’ve re-entered the waters from my perspective.
Bill Gasiamis 21:33
Yeah. So tell me about what you had to recover from. So you’re in a, you’re rolling with one of your competitors, friends, and you end up going limp, and then you’re out. And then it’s not good. So tell me a little bit about what happened after that. And then we’ll talk about what you had to overcome.
Signs of Carotid Artery Dissection – Chris Martin
Chris Martin 21:56
So I didn’t go out. It was just you’re looking around and you’re trying to sit up, my whole right side of the body was completely like just limp. So I couldn’t move. So I was trying to get up. And the room was kind of spinning around, and it felt like it was just like, slow motion.
Chris Martin 22:23
And it was kind of like (spinning sound) and I was trying to communicate like to my they’re all rolling around me, all my teammates. And they thought I was just kind of you know, lightheaded. And it was just, you know, he was just about to go out. You know, because that happens sometimes you get lightheaded sometimes if you don’t tap right away.
Chris Martin 22:53
And that’s kind of how it felt it kind of felt like I was kind of in that corridor between being put to sleep at not. But I was like living in the middle somehow. It just wasn’t wearing off, if that makes sense. But the hard part was just not knowing what was happening to me, you know, when it happened.
Chris Martin 23:16
You have no control of your right side of your body and you cannot speak you know what you want to say but the words can’t come out. And you’re trying to communicate and you just can’t and the brain is not functioning. And luckily, after about five minutes, they realize something’s not right with this guy.
Chris Martin 23:37
And they called my fortunate situation is that I live in we’re here and this happened in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. And Frater is in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, which is during the middle of the day, like whatever time it was. It was midday sometime it only took, you know, half hour to get there.
Chris Martin 24:03
But some of these other stroke survivors they don’t and the reason I say is some places are going to know how to deal with what’s happening here on a higher level. And they’re going to have the right equipment and they’re going to have the right doctors and they’re going to have the right experience and other places might not have access to that because we don’t have cutting edge.
Chris Martin 24:25
Like Oak Creek is remotely close to Milwaukee, Milwaukee it’s like a big city. Like Chicago is the big city next to us but like every state’s got their like big city, you know, and that’s where the good hospitals and doctors and everything are. That’s basically where it happened to me so I was fortunate.
Chris Martin 24:44
The whole ride in the ambulance, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what was happening to me. All I was doing was focusing on my breathing. So you know, going back to what you said learning to be calm under pressure. Just I was like basically and like just trying, like I didn’t know.
Chris Martin 25:06
I’m like just telling myself, you know, just relax your body, let them take care of you, relax your body. And then you’re, you’re you’re thinking about your kids, you’re thinking about your life insurance policies. That’s all going through your head, you’re coming to terms with things, you’re just, you know. And then I just remember, once they got me into that emergency room, they’re asking me questions.
Intro 25:35
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind, like, how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid in case I make matters worse?
Intro 25:53
Doctors will explain things that obviously, you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask. If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com where you can download a guide that will help you.
Intro 26:15
It’s called the seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke. These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke, they’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website. Now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.
Chris Martin Waking Up In The Hospital
Chris Martin 26:38
And the last thing I’m never going to forget the last thing they said. They said to me, it’s like can you move any part of your right body? Can you move that leg at all? In my mind, I took everything and I was like, and like my leg just twitched. And then I just remember the doctor saying put him out, put him out.
Chris Martin 27:03
Boom, I was out. Next thing you know, I wake up in the hospital, like literally, like, wake up in the hospital bed and my family’s all around me. And I’m looking around and I’m like, oh shit, I survived. And then I started down like, Well, okay, I got the disability insurance policy.
Chris Martin 27:26
I’ve been I’ve been doing insurance for 20 years. So this is all I think about as insurance. So, but that’s what I was thinking about. And then I, I couldn’t speak. You know, they were I was trying to like they were holding up, you know, the things like, chair.
Chris Martin 27:42
You know, like I was trying to say the words. I understood everything they were saying. I could read. You know what I mean? But I couldn’t communicate. And then I just didn’t really have any feeling in my right hand. And then from there, it’s like, basically, just how did this like, laid in the hospital, next couple days, what happened?
Chris Martin 28:06
This does not make any sense. What’s a stroke? Like, I couldn’t even like I didn’t know what was going on the whole time there. I didn’t know what was going on. And then I got home, I still didn’t know what’s going on. I still didn’t know. Like, I was so naive and ignorant about strokes.
Chris Martin 28:23
And I mean, right when I got out of the hospital after a dissection I have a stint to my neck now. After I went back to the doctor, they said the clot was so big, we had to stint it because you need to lay low and blah, blah, blah.
Chris Martin 28:41
See, back in the day when people told me to lay low, you know, doctors, you just go and whatever. I’m not gonna lay low. Two days after I get out of the hospital, I’m trying to go to Planet Fitness to try to lift weights. Yeah, I mean, that’s how uneducated I was. And then I realized that night like I’m like, I was on like, I was trying to lift.
Chris Martin 29:04
This is not happening. Like I’m like, seriously like, looking back. I’m like, You got to be kidding me. Like I could have had another stroke the clot was still there. And I’m in Planet Fitness throwing around weights, I’m trying to get back to jiu-jitsu shape, because I’m pissed off that something like this would set me back.
Chris Martin 29:22
Completely ignorant, completely ignorant. And now after, like I said, I had the conversation with the guy and then he like, told me to start documenting and I started getting serious about it. And I started having all these conversations. I’m like, oh my God, this is some serious stuff.
Bill Gasiamis 29:42
Yeah, man, it’s so serious that you know the reality is the world stroke organization says that one in four people will have a stroke in their lifetime. Man, how they have the stroke varies a lot. There’s so many different ways to have one right most of the strokes are preventable, they say about 90% of them are preventable caused by mostly the way we eat, smoking, drinking drugs.
Bill Gasiamis 30:10
You know, all the vices that people tend to have. And most of them are self-inflicted just like heart disease and cancers and all that kind of stuff, right. And then, there’s these unfortunate situations where somebody’s driving a car, they have a minor collision, and they get a bit of whiplash. And that causes a carotid artery dissection or a vertebral artery dissection.
Bill Gasiamis 30:32
And I’ve interviewed heaps of people that are recovering from that, right. And the situation is, is if one in four people are going to have a stroke in their lifetime, and the United States has, what 300 million people, people, men, that is that 80 million people or more, at some point will have a stroke, right?
Bill Gasiamis 30:55
So the situation is so critical. And I started talking about stroke in 2013, after my first two brain hemorrhages in 2012. And I was going to community events and talking about the prevention of stroke. What is it, how to recognize the signs, or what to do if somebody is having a stroke? Okay, the FAST basically the FAST message, right face arms, speech, time.
Bill Gasiamis 31:24
And then I’m still doing those presentations. And it’s been nearly 10 years since I started doing them. 9 years next year, and not much has changed. Not many people have an awareness of A somebody having had a stroke. And if they do, they don’t pay enough attention to go, what happens to them.
Lack of Precautionary Measures
Bill Gasiamis 31:44
Usually, it’s associated with older people, and it’s not associated from collisions from a car from whiplash. It’s not associated from sports, or any of that stuff. But in Australia, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the sport, cricket. But we had one of our much loved Australian cricket players get hit in the neck by a cricket ball at a pretty rapid pace, which is like a baseball.
Bill Gasiamis 32:09
And he was hit in one of the carotid arteries, he fell and died on the spot that he was hit immediately, because of a massive tear in one of his carotid arteries, and he bled to death in his neck. So even then, there wasn’t much done by the cricket community to raise awareness beyond making a massive headline on TV and throughout the country.
Bill Gasiamis 32:35
And probably the cricket playing world where this person had played which would have been England, maybe Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, all those countries were cricket’s popular New Zealand. But there wasn’t really any more said about the actual cause of the death, which was that the artery was damaged. And that’s not uncommon. And it’s possibly something that can be prevented by neck gear being worn.
Bill Gasiamis 33:10
Now, this guy wore headgear. And his head is protected to about his neck, similar to what baseball players wear when they’re facing the pitcher. But beneath there, there isn’t any protection, could you imagine, in a sport like that, it would be quite, maybe it might get in the way of the way they play the game. And it might be a little bit difficult to handle.
Bill Gasiamis 33:32
And the lack of times if that has happened in a, in such a large event, where it made news all over the place that the amount of times that that’s happened, that are still rare, but there hasn’t been really a move towards making it safer for somebody around the neck, on the on the side of the body that’s facing the ball.
Bill Gasiamis 34:00
So I’m staggered. This is why I started the podcast. I’m staggered by the lack of awareness, the podcast was about me meeting other people so that I could feel better about myself. And here I am 175 or so episodes in. And not much has changed. And I’m not expecting it to change like that overnight. I think we’ve got a long job to do.
Bill Gasiamis 34:27
But then here we go. Here’s some bloke that I normally would have nothing to do with from the other side of the planet reaching out to me and says, man, we need to raise awareness about stroke in BJJ.
Bill Gasiamis 34:37
And automatically what I’m thinking is, you know, at the BJJ conference that happens annually all over the world. I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be great for somebody to get up and go to that event and say, Hey, guys, let me tell you about stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 34:51
What happened to me my story what happened to all the other people who I’ve interviewed and let me tell you about what to do if somebody You think on the map is having a stroke? What are the signs? How do we get them help? How do we take action fast and possibly save their life and minimize the damage?
Chris Martin 35:13
Yeah, so I completely agree with you, the hard part about that is from what I’ve experienced so far is finding, you know, those organizations that do get all the coaches under the one tent, all at the same time. I did hats off to the BJJ, mental podcast, mental coach podcast, Gustavo Dantas.
Chris Martin 35:41
He’s in Scottsdale, Arizona. And two years ago, he did put on, he hosted the coach’s seminar. He tried to get as many coaches in Arizona to come. And it was a number of different speakers. One person spoke about mental health. One person spoke about PTSD.
Chris Martin 36:08
And so it was one of those types of, you know, value add, and how do we make our gyms better? What do we do better as a community for Brazilian jujitsu? And how do we make it safer for our participants? Gustavo Dantas put that on. Now I don’t know how many coaches there are probably X amount of schools.
Chris Martin 36:31
You know, nowadays, there’s, you know, in every city in every state in the United States, there’s a couple of jiu-jitsu gyms. So that means there’s a lot of coaches, I would guess there’s probably a couple 100 coaches in Arizona, Gustavo was able to get probably 25 of them, which is a great step, you know, but that’s still 175 That you haven’t touched.
Chris Martin 36:57
And then, you know, that just leaves it at that day. So, it is a good start, however, what I feel like at where we are, are at a more critical point. What I heard you say is that you are very aware that, you know, traumatic car accidents are what causes a lot of vertebral and the carotid dissections, and that’s the blunt or the excessive force.
Chris Martin 37:28
So I have an article. It was a 2019 case study in the Journal of vascular ultrasound journal, and it was written by five authors. Michelle Stedman is listed first. So Stedman and five others put together this case study. And to summarize it, and I’ll just say the discussion is blunt trauma, and it says, “following major trauma” such as motor vehicle crashes, aggressive screening, using computed CTAs have been recommended.
Possible Misdiagnosis
Chris Martin 38:25
So the reason I’m saying telling you this is because from my case studies, many healthy jiu-jitsu practitioners who have had dissections have been misdiagnosed and sent home. And they have not had the right screenings done to them. And so later on, because they did not recognize the signs later on, through activity or day to day, it caused the stroke later on.
Chris Martin 38:59
So it was a misdiagnosis. The reason I’m telling you that is because this article goes on to talk about the different strokes, or I’m sorry, the different the different chokes, and again, they’re continuing to call these in jujitsu chokes, but these are really strangles because the choke is when you have something going down your passageway and you’re choking, I can’t breathe.
Chris Martin 39:29
We’re not choking each other, we’re not sticking our fingers down each other’s throats. We’re we’re compressing the carotid arteries in the material arteries to constrict blood flow to the brain as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And through that compression is causing what this article is saying is it is the equivalent to motor vehicle crashes.
Chris Martin 40:02
Some of these strangles, the one that they talk about is the guillotine, they call it the guillotine drop type maneuver appears to have the same kinetic force, that being involved in a high speed rear end motor vehicle crash also does. So the guillotine is I grab onto your neck, I wrap under either just my other hand, or I come under your shoulder, and then I press down on your head, throw my legs around your back and pull you to the ground cranking the neck and back and at the same time, restricting the blood flow on both carotid arteries.
Chris Martin 40:44
This article goes on to say that studies was this article is written because what they’re saying is that because of the increase in mixed martial arts, this was a case study they did on a former Marine drill sergeant, and he was in the Marine Corps teaching combatives and he had a carotid artery dissection, following a guillotine choke.
Chris Martin 41:29
So they said that oh, part of the Marine Corps, close combative training involves teaching and demonstrating chokeholds which, for several years, this 46 year old man offered himself up as a practice model. One, of these chokes was the guillotine choke or guillotine drop.
Chris Martin 42:01
And that’s the one that they go on to say in the in the article that it’s about the same amount of pressure as a high speed, rear end. So and the reason I’m saying this is because that blunt force from that motor vehicle crash, that when you go into the ER, and you tell them what happens, then they can figure it out.
Chris Martin 42:31
And then they do the proper scans, which usually CTAs if they try to do a CAT scan, or an MRI, without contrast, they are not gonna find a dissection. And then if they send that person home, they could have a stroke later on. That’s the danger.
Bill Gasiamis 42:49
Okay, so all we need to do is get the message out there. We need to get people to start recognizing what a stroke looks like. And then when they’re taking that person to give them assistance and get help explain that they were being choked.
Bill Gasiamis 43:02
And at the same time, I beg your pardon, they were being strangled. And at the same time, that they may have a dissection in one of the vertebral or carotid arteries therefore treat it as a collision of a vehicle.
Chris Martin 43:21
Right, aggressively treated. And so a success story that I’ve recently had was an email from a gentleman who had a carotid artery dissection, they took him into the ER, they explained it to the doctors what he was doing.
Chris Martin 43:41
The doctors are all gonna be like Oh, yeah jiu-jitsu I know exactly what that is like it’s kind of a new thing. However, he sent me a thank you letter because the doctor went in on Google after listening to what these people said his training partners he googled and you know whatever he found the article that’s ranking right now is going to be if you type in like chokes or strokes from chokes in jiu-jitsu chokes and you know, whatever keywords you want.
Chris Martin 44:17
You know, the BJJ Asia did an article just ripping my article saying Hey, Chris Martin, here’s his research. These are what you got to look for like this or that like what doctors need to look for. These are the screening so I’ve documented everything and I put it out there the best that I can like you type in like strokes and jujitsu.
Chris Martin 44:41
You should be finding some Chris Martin articles. I’ve put out as much stuff as I can. And the good news is, is that you’re right. That’s what they should do and then the doctors need to treat it accordingly.
Duplex Ultrasound
Chris Martin 44:56
This article The reason it’s very interesting to me is that the fact that they go on to say that, you know, this is somebody this Marine Corps combatives instructor had been, you know, doing this for many years has taken trauma? They did when they brought him in. They used a DUS. It’s a, it’s a, what do you call these things?
Chris Martin 45:34
Duplex ultrasound? Have you ever heard of it? No. Yeah, so this duplex all ultrasound is a screening tool that they’re saying, can detect if there’s something funky in the carotid arteries or the vertebral arteries.
Chris Martin 45:50
Instead of going in and doing a CTA, every time they’re saying maybe this is a medical device that we could use. And so what they show here, I’m looking at, you know, a clean, you know looks like, and then what this this guy’s look like.
Chris Martin 46:11
And you can clearly see in ultrasound, the blue the blockage around like, it’s not as clean. There’s, some, it says elevated velocities in the distal common carotid artery consistent with a high-grade lesion.
Chris Martin 46:29
You know what I mean? So what I believe is that most people are not aware this exists. I’m still learning. I mean, I’m learning on a daily basis, it’s been four years. So you know, going back to saying, you know, it’s been 10 years, where are we going with this?
Chris Martin 46:48
Man, time flies. And I’m learning on a daily basis, like even just learning about this new screening tool. And, learn reading this case study. This is new to me. But it just shows and then with my I’ve got over 100 cases that I’ve documented, I’ve worked with a doctor who put together a case study with some of the data that I’ve collected, we’re waiting to get that published.
Chris Martin 47:19
It’s just basically a case study that shows A here are a number of people, this is what they prevented, presented. This is what it was just kind of making the community aware, like there’s a sport that exists. It’s called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and this is what they’re doing.
Chris Martin 47:37
And really what this article sums it up the best buys, you know, Stedman, she says, You know, it’s, these guys, these guys and girls, were practicing this, that the physician need to be aware that there’s hard trauma on these necks. They’re not thinking about it like that. But because of that, they’re saying these athletes could benefit from some early detection from using a tool like this.
Chris Martin 48:06
And so I’m doing I’m doing more research on these myself. I might buy one for myself, just to have it at my house. Just to check my carotid arteries. Why not? And you know, it’s funny. And it’s here. The reason that it doesn’t exist, that the awareness is not there is because we don’t want to think about this.
Chris Martin 48:35
It’s not something that we want to think about. And nobody wants to take the time to think about something that’s not going to happen to them, I wouldn’t want to take any time to think about something that’s not going to happen to me.
Chris Martin 48:47
So eventually, what’s going to have to happen if you want my personal opinion, is that similar to safety protocols that in the United States, if you have a factory, you have employees, if you have employees, you have rules that you have to follow for the safety of those employees.
Chris Martin 49:06
And then there’s governing organizations such as OSHA, they call it and they have training, manuals and instructions and posters that need to be put up and waivers that need to be filled out to bring awareness to the safety issues inside the workplace. And I don’t see that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu should be any different.
Chris Martin 49:30
I think, then, to get the proper insurance. I think you should have to go through these types of training. Every instructor should not have an option to attend the annual conflict conference. The instructors should be again, if they want this insurance for their gym, they’re going to have to, you know, go through the safety protocols and bring awareness and have the training to understand the signs, not give them an option because none of them are going to take the time to do it.
Bill Gasiamis 50:00
Yeah, you know what? There’s there’s a legal nightmare, waiting to explode on somebody who comes across a client or, you know, somebody who’s attending their gym is not made aware of the risks and then ends up injured and then decides to take legal action and sue that organization I recon it’s a legal nightmare about to happen for somebody.
Bill Gasiamis 50:31
What’s interesting is the International BJJ Federation, you know, on their website and looking at it now covers the European jujitsu Federation, it covers the pain jujitsu Federation, and a whole bunch of other Federation’s organizations have an anti-doping policy, you know, and they have an anti-doping section on their website.
Bill Gasiamis 50:59
The there is a known condition that happens to lumberjacks, okay, which is carotid artery dissections and vertebral artery dissections. Because when they’re cutting down trees, and they’re looking down, and then they want to see where the tree is about to fall, and looking up, it is causing repetitive trauma to those arteries, and it’s causing ischemic strokes.
Bill Gasiamis 51:30
So there’s an awareness in that community. And perhaps they don’t really talk about it to this extent, but maybe there is some version of understanding of recognizing the signs of it, because I imagine over the hundreds of years that people have been cutting trees down, that they would have come across this very many times.
Bill Gasiamis 51:49
So it is early days for BJJ as a serious sport that has evolved or emerged from Brazil, where the two founders are world-renowned and now it’s starting to be it started to take off because of UFC and because of mixed martial arts. So there would have to be some kind of movement, you know, this is kind of the groundswell I’m feeling.
Bill Gasiamis 52:22
But then it’ll have to accelerate at some point. And I think it’ll accelerate by you doing what you’re doing. Us putting out content about it, I want to prevent stroke. But I feel like the least help available for stroke survivors is after they come home. So what happens after I come home, there’s no support there. But of course, I’d rather not have a show, because that meant that there was no stroke survivors.
Chris Martin 52:46
Well, that’s the goal right there. Because here’s a thing in jiu-jitsu see most that one in four stat. I believe if you break that down, and you throw everybody in a bucket, you know, most of those people are on the older end, it’s more of a lifestyle-induced stroke. And the jiu-jitsu community’s more of health, fitness, mental health, as well.
Chris Martin 53:24
They’re a different step. You know what I mean? So going back to you know, making this a priority, you know, to bring awareness to people I don’t think that it’s fair that people are going into it without knowing but again, I’m also going to say this you can’t fault the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community for not knowing.
Chris Martin 54:05
So it’s you know, we’re really in this and nobody here is I am not here to you know, stop obviously, I’m still training myself you know, I created a lifestyle however there does, you know, there does have to be some some awareness to you know, what we’re doing to each other and what I do know is this.
Chris Martin 54:37
So I’m sorry if you you know, don’t have a show anymore because everybody because we do come you know, you and I come together and we figure out the magic formula. And we’ve healed everybody. But in jiu-jitsu. It really can. The stroke is the worst-case scenario.
Chris Martin 55:00
The dissection is, sadly enough, it’s probably happening more than we know, because it’s not being diagnosed because it’s very hard to diagnose. And again, it’s, nobody’s gonna run a CTA scan on somebody who just has some minor, you know, dizziness or dehydration type or just doesn’t feel right. Unless there’s a reason, you know.
Delayed Strokes
Bill Gasiamis 55:34
Some of the people I’ve spoken to who have had those collisions, and then had a stroke as a result of a dissection. It happened many, many months later, sometimes 6, 12, 24 months later, and the dissection wasn’t maybe that dramatic at the beginning, but over time, and further movements and further trauma, and then it becomes larger and larger.
Bill Gasiamis 55:59
And then eventually, the dissection becomes big enough where it either falls off. And that is what causes the blockage, or because of the blood flow. And what you mentioned earlier in the article, the increased rate of blood flow with a narrowing happens, it changes the way that the blood travels.
Bill Gasiamis 56:22
And it creates a high pressure and a low pressure system behind the dissection. And that is what creates the clot. Sometimes the clot gets stuck there and doesn’t dislodge for a long, long time. And then it moves after another trauma or another movement or something that dislodges it, right?
Bill Gasiamis 56:41
So you’re right. It’s, difficult to link the two because the person who experiences the stroke might not happen when they’ve been to BJJ it might have been two years after they’ve stopped going to BJJ. And they’re wondering, you know, how did this happen to me, but the the major trauma happened when they were at BJJ, perhaps right?
Bill Gasiamis 57:03
So yeah, yeah. And what’s interesting is, you know, with these emerging sports, you know, NFL in the United States and AFL in Australia are really starting to take seriously CTE, you know, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Bill Gasiamis 57:24
Which is the multiple collisions of the heads against head, and the concussions that happen and what that’s doing to players and sending them into fits of anger, depression, rage, and some of them are causing serious harm to the community, and to their loved ones to themselves before they end up killing themselves, right?
Bill Gasiamis 57:51
So it started to become a serious thing now, but it’s taken so many decades, if you imagine about how long how long, the NFL has been around, and how long AFL has been around in Australia, it’s nearly 100 years or more. And, and, and it’s only now starting to be taken seriously. And that’s because I think there was not enough reach the people like you and I that were doing the kind of work that you’re doing didn’t have these platforms of podcasts, YouTube, social media to share.
Bill Gasiamis 58:29
And they weren’t able to raise awareness that fast, and they weren’t able to be taken seriously because there was a lot of money at stake. Imagine now if the NFL was in a position where they had to alter this sports to avoid collisions of the head, it would be a completely different sport. And this is another underlying issue. Right? So BJJ Yeah, you know, imagine being Brazilian jujitsu spectator and then going to BJJ and not saying people getting strangled.
Chris Martin 59:01
I mean, what’s interesting about that, though, I and you’re right, so, you know, there’s kind of like, you know, you got different ways to submit the person. And a lot of times it’s arm locks, joint locks of like, you know, wrist lock, an arm lock, what’s really popular these days are knee locks, ankle locks and so that’s a lot of that’s a lot of opportunities right there.
Chris Martin 59:41
I so the head’s only one of many. The head, to be honest, is the funnest part. You know, the strangle is the fun part. That’s probably just our primitive nature of you know, that strangle and when you do it in with the key and you really get fancy with wrapping that thing around people’s necks in from different angles and upside down, and you know, you’re basically upside down wrapping gis around people’s necks and arms.
Chris Martin 1:00:07
And that’s what we consider fun. And it really is, it’s a puzzle. However, what I’m trying to say is this. What’s interesting though, if you look at the evolution of the police force, I train a couple, I do some private lessons with some Milwaukee police officers. And we just do combative type situationals.
Chris Martin 1:00:41
And I show them everything that they can do. And basically, they just can’t touch the neck and the head. So they, you know, it’s still fun to grapple with these guys, you know, we’re going at it and doing different, different moves pulls, you know, takedowns, like, you can still control people and have fun.
Chris Martin 1:01:07
I’m not saying that that’s what where we need to go. However, again, even in this paper here, it says that the Marines themselves have their own protocols that the Marine Corps recommends, that training chokeholds and related maneuvers should not be at full force, and never more than five seconds duration during training.
Chris Martin 1:01:42
In this case, what happened to this guy, the patient has subjected themselves to repeated exposures over several years, as part of his task as a trainer, which is what I was doing, you know, a lot of us trainers are allowing, you know, hey, you’re having a problem with that choke, do it on me, let me feel it, oh, that’s not tight enough, you need to adjust a little bit more here, no, more torque, you gotta turn your back here, get underneath, crank it, you know.
Chris Martin 1:02:18
And so that’s, you know, looking back, there was a lot of trauma to my neck. And so you know, and then once you had so much trauma, that the clot started growing and growing and growing. And so I’m just fascinated by this article that there could be something out there called a duplex ultrasound, that could be something that I could just go around with my training partners. And if we do recognize that there is some type of scar, or a lesion is what it is.
Bill Gasiamis 1:03:00
Increased blood flow and lesion, you’ll see the speed of the blood flow and a lesion. So tell me about you then, man is your neck and your head out of bounds these days?
Chris Martin 1:03:14
I mean, out of bounds like no, it’s not I mean, I’ve been playing with fire probably it’s out of bounds from what this guy was doing. Letting people hey, I don’t do that. In practice. We don’t I don’t let people do it on me. So that’s the other thing people understand what the dangers what we have for each other is that in traditional jiu-jitsu practice, we’re choking each other back and forth, in practice, you know, for half an hour before we going to combative training.
Chris Martin 1:03:55
So we’re like working the chokes with each other to tighten up our chokes. And so over time, that creates trauma over into the same spots. So it’s like if you think about the same spot because that’s just how like where your hands go on the gi or where their hands going.
Chris Martin 1:04:17
So you’re working the same spot so I don’t let people do that to me. And if we’re practicing chokes that day. I will go join another two people and I’ll be the third person, unfortunately, I have a stint to my neck and I don’t know the ramifications of that thing breaking I don’t want to find out.
Chris Martin 1:04:39
However, in training they do attack my neck. Some of them do. Some of them maybe don’t go like I have a coach who’s more advanced than me. We roll with each other he doesn’t attack my neck he attacks me in other ways.
Bill Gasiamis 1:04:58
The ramifications are huge man. If the stint gets damaged and and then it causes a clot, then it’s an issue, then it could cause another stroke need to be removed and replaced, etc.
Bill Gasiamis 1:05:10
So I’m not here to tell you what to do. But I’m just, you know, just sort of saying what I understand about it right, which is the ramifications are huge people have already spoken about it at length, what the ramifications are damage to a carotid artery, a stint is in a similar situation.
Bill Gasiamis 1:05:28
Now, the fact that you reached out to me suggests to me that you’re on a bit of a crusade, you want to no, let me let me rephrase, it’s not a crusade you’re on a campaign to raise awareness, because that’s definitely what you’re on. Right? And are you getting traction? Are you struggling to get traction?
Chris Martin 1:05:53
Getting horrible traction, I’m getting wonderful emails from wonderful people, like one, guy every couple of months, you know, telling me this is great and telling me that, you know, keep my head up and keep doing what you’re doing, kid you know, it’s gonna pay off and really encouraging things.
Chris Martin 1:06:18
I had a conversation with, you know, the spouse of somebody who’s died had the conversation of the, you know, sister in law, who her sister’s husband died, you know, doing jiu-jitsu crazy story about that. And she’s telling me, she’s like, you know, we just this one story was really bad.
Chris Martin 1:06:49
And, you know, you hear all the stories, and this one, like, sounded like, there was blood involved, I didn’t have blood involved. This gentleman didn’t make it. And what’s very interesting about this story, is that he didn’t make it. And then, like, the family was kind of like, you know, what happened, you know, they can come to terms.
Chris Martin 1:07:15
And then the crazy thing is, it’s like, a couple of weeks after his death, you know, the family was trying to come to terms with and a book showed up on the doorstep that he must have ordered, you know, before he passed, and the book was called The Art of Strangles.
Bill Gasiamis 1:07:39
Yeah, it is an art and I understand the combative nature of it, and why especially men do it. Now, I’m not a female, and I don’t know any women in the sport. So that’s why I’m not commenting on their behalf, right. But I know why men do because I know why my son does it, I know why my mates participate in BJJ.
Bill Gasiamis 1:07:59
They all talk about the positive impact that it has on their self confidence on their ability to overcome challenges on their ability to transform their personal lives by using the skills and applying them to regular life, it’s definitely kept a lot of the people that I know who do it out of anxiety and depression.
Bonds Forged In BJJ – Chris Martin
Bill Gasiamis 1:08:26
And for the people that are listening to this and thinking, Oh, my God, these guys say that they choke their friends. This is something that people do as comrades, they do it as people who are collaborating to teach each other, how to get better at dealing with adversity in life, and then that is transformational in the rest of their lives. They’re not doing it to hurt each other. Although people do get hurt. It’s about actually in growth, and overcoming and becoming better versions of themselves.
Chris Martin 1:09:05
And that’s just one small little piece of it because I believe that bigger piece is the coming together and getting better as a community. As a Brotherhood as a Sisterhood. It almost feels like a fraternity. This is like these relationships that are built inside where people are going to battle with each other together every single day.
Chris Martin 1:09:35
And then taking that out and going to competitions and fighting others it’s a tribe, it’s more than a fraternity. It’s more than a family. It’s a full on tribe that you don’t get anywhere else. So to have that taken away from you. Do you think most people walk away from this sport?
Chris Martin 1:09:58
No, they don’t these crazy people, they don’t they keep doing it. Because it’s that’s how strong it is. All I’m saying is the crusade that I’m on is a awareness crusade it is, it is this, it’s, you just have to bring this to the table to your people who are stepping on the mats and let them know, this is something that can happen.
Chris Martin 1:10:27
That’s all you have to say. If this happens, then x, y, z, here are the protocols. Listen, you don’t even have to talk about it, just put it on the wall. And so if it does happen, we have the protocols of what like, like you said, make sure when you, you don’t put the guy in the car, he doesn’t drive he or she doesn’t drive by themselves, you drive them or you call an ambulance if XYZ when you get there, this is what you say.
Chris Martin 1:10:57
You tell them you do this, you know, these are the scans that were typically we’ve had success, you know, finding these clots. And you know, so you know, just having that safety protocol it’s gonna save lives 100% because you can’t go on the mat and just not know that this is going to happen.
Chris Martin 1:11:21
So going back to my surfer thing. It’s like a surfer going and surfing in a lake. You know, a freshwater lake. That’s, well, it’s let’s just say there’s some fancy waves or like a waterpark. You know, they got the artificial waves. If there’s any sharks in there. Yeah. So you just get in your surfing, then you find out there’s sharks, you know what I mean?
Chris Martin 1:11:45
So it’s kind of like it catches you by surprise. That’s what I’m saying. It shouldn’t catch us by surprise. Like, if we know the signs. So the good news is that I have a number of case studies of people who have found that they had a dissection, they treated it by staying off the mats and getting better and healing, and then not having a stroke. Well, there you go. So there’s a win for the team.
Chris Martin 1:12:11
So now if everybody can kind of, but this guy was like a logical dude like when he got home, like he did the research. And then he found my articles that oh, maybe I have a dissection. And then he took himself to the doctor, and said, Doc, I think I might have a dissection, here’s why this is what we do.
Chris Martin 1:12:29
Then they did the right tests, and then they found it. And then sure as shit it took six months. But he said that he said it went from whatever size to basically gone in six months. So basically, he just had to stay off the mats.
Chris Martin 1:12:41
But if he would have done what I did, which is just keep going on the mats and training every day, then I had a stroke he didn’t, so he wins. But I’m glad I helped him when I feel good. I’m a coach for doing that. And that’s basically that’s the crusade I’m on. It’s just Hey guys, here, treat it accordingly, that’s it.
Bill Gasiamis 1:13:02
And know the risks. I love it, absolutely love it. So, Chris, where can people find out a little bit more about you and the work that you’re doing?
Chris Martin 1:13:13
Yeah, so I’m kind of all over the place, obviously, if you haven’t figured it out through my interview, but the hashtag that you can kind of find me at is BizJitsu, so that’s like my Instagram, I believe my YouTube channel, I have a medium blog medium.com. And that’s also bizjitsu is going to be the username for that as well.
Chris Martin 1:13:14
So any of those, you know, my youtube I have, you’ll find different interviews, many of the interviews are posted. So if people are looking for like, they want to hear a story about a like-minded, like, what the signs symptoms were for that student, they can hear it there.
Chris Martin 1:14:03
My medium blog is going to have all my protocols and interviews and just kind of stories and you can kind of follow my story over the course of the years through my interviews. And if you just go into Google and you type in you know, Jiu-jitsu strokes from Jiu-jitsu, or strokes of BJJ, from chokes, you’re going to just get bombarded with probably some of my articles. I don’t know what maybe it’s just my SEO, but I believe that’s how people are finding me.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:33
Okay, what I’ll do is I’ll post all of the links to all of your socials and your website to the show notes. So anybody who wants to get that can basically go to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes and they’ll be able to pick through all of the episodes at the very top or near the top after you’ve heard this episode will be the Chris Martin interview.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:59
And then from there To be able to click on that and see all the different links to the website, and his socials and his YouTube. And hopefully, what we can do is share the crap out of this episode, and put it in front of as many people as possible so that we can assist in raising awareness because my podcast is called recovery after stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:23
But of course, I would rather my podcast didn’t exist and never existed, because that meant I never had a stroke. And nobody else that I know, on this podcast has had a stroke. So let’s see if we can support you in that journey that you’re on. I really appreciate you doing it.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:40
It’s very rare that you find people who have taken on the preventative side of the stroke journey. And I think that you will 100% save lives, and you will make people get diagnosed sooner which will impact their stroke recovery, and hopefully make it shorter, and then it’ll have families recover sooner, and people have their dads and their mums, for longer and their kids for longer. And that’s all that we want to do, isn’t it, there’s no need for us to just lose people unnecessarily to this situation.
Chris Martin 1:16:17
Especially doing what we love and you know, what we think is healthy, you know, to not know and then they come home and to lose somebody or to lose your loss of daily daily living skills. Is you know, doing what you love.
Bill Gasiamis 1:16:40
Thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Chris Martin 1:16:42
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for what you do. And thank you for all the listeners as well who are helping us and helping you spread the awareness as well. So thank you.
Intro 1:16:54
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals their opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast or the individual’s own experience and we do not necessarily share the same opinion nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed.
Intro 1:17:11
All content on this website at any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis. The content is intended to complement your medical treatment and support healing.
Intro 1:17:28
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Intro 1:17:48
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Intro 1:18:10
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